Enhancing fuzzy robot navigation systems by mimicking human visual perception of natural terrain traversability

Abstract

The paper presents a technique for learning to assess terrain traversability for outdoor mobile robot navigation using human-embedded logic and real-time perception of terrain features extracted from image data. The methodology utilizes a fuzzy logic framework and vision algorithms for analysis of the terrain. The terrain assessment and learning methodology is tested and validated with a set of real world image data acquired by an onboard vision system.